Name: Beyond the Forecast: Preparing for the 2025 Hurricane Season
Uploaded: 2025-05-22T17:30:06.888Z
Duration: 46 min 28 s
Description: Beyond the Forecast: Preparing for the 2025 Hurricane Season

Transcript for "Beyond the Forecast: Preparing for the 2025 Hurricane Season": Alright. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening. Welcome to Cotality's twenty twenty five hurricane season preview webinar. This year's hurricane season is set to begin in less than ten days. Before we move our attention to the Atlantic and what we can expect this year, it is important to remember the thousands of people across Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and the rest of the Southeast who are still recovering from the devastation of the twenty twenty four hurricane seasons in Helene and Milton. Just because there have been other catastrophic events in the last year or because we're entering a new season, we just strive to keep those affected by the flooding from Helene and the winds of Milton in mind as there are so many lessons to be learned in how we understand and manage risk. It only takes one hurricane to make for a devastating season, and that is why it's imperative to be prepared to have risk management and emergency management strategies set ahead of time. It is important to have a partner who is there to support you and your business to ensure speedy recovery. As always, it is our goal here at Cotality to ensure everyone knows their risk in order to accelerate their recovery. My name is John Schneyer. I am the director of research and content here at Cotality, and I will be the moderator for today's webinar. If there's one takeaway from this webinar, it is that Cotality is here as a partner to help not just clients, but anyone be better prepared for the devastation and uncertainty a hurricane season can bring. Our team of experts presenting today are going to walk us through what happened last year, what lessons were learned, as well as discuss what we can expect from this year's hurricane season and how we can work together to manage any and all hurricane risk. It only takes one storm, one major hurricane making landfall in a city like Tampa Bay, Charleston, or Houston to make for an infamous season. A mild season from a storm count perspective can still be catastrophic in terms of damage and loss. Just because a seasonal outlook indicates near below normal does not mean there's zero risk. It's our hope that all audiences will find the information presented during this webinar useful and impactful, and the most informed decisions require the greatest level of detail and precision. We have a fantastic panel of experts who will be speaking on our hurricane season preview today. I'm very excited to welcome first time Cotality presenter, Caitlin Fine, Cotality's director of forensic meteorology. Caitlin joined Cotality this year. We spent close to a decade decade as a meteorologist for the US Navy, supporting and directing programs including those at the Joint Typhoon Warning Center. Caitlin will cover what happened during the twenty twenty four hurricane season and what we can expect in 2025 given the outlooks available today. Following Caitlin will be Howard Kunst, Cotality's chief actuary. And as our chief actuary, Howard has his finger on the pulse of the property and casualty insurance market. He'll join us he'll join us on stage to talk about the headwinds and tailwinds currently affecting carriers in The US. With the stage set from both a meteorology and industry perspective, we will then invite Brian Sullivan, senior product manager of Cotality's Resilience Solutions to the stage. When it comes to underwriting, hazard is only part of the story. The characteristics that comprise the building through the storm's path greatly impact the likelihood and magnitude of a claim. Brian will join us to talk about how accounting for resilience during the underwriting process can affect your outcomes in season's end. Risk management is a capital management question. And across our industry, cap models are the gold standard of estimating loss and probabilities of those loss. These inputs are key to any risk management strategy, including reinsurance budgeting or alternative risk transfer mechanisms. To discuss how Cotality partners with clients to manage hurricane risk, we will invite Tal Paschal, product manager of the Cotality North Atlantic hurricane model, to the stage. We know the real hard work starts after a hurricane dissipates or moves offshore. This includes the cleanup, the restoration, and rebuilding. What do you do when you're flooded with thousands of claims across the entire state or multiple states? How do you manage adjusted resources to ensure a smooth recovery? To wrap up our webinar, we'll ask Mike Kolar to talk about the challenges carriers face when it comes to addressing the damage a hurricane leaves behind and where a Cotality could step up to ease the stress and burden. I hope you're all as excited as I am to get things started. So let's welcome Caitlin Fine to the stage. Caitlin, over to you. Thanks, John John. First, I'm gonna recap the twenty twenty four North Atlantic hurricane season. It was an active year with 18 named storms and 11 hurricanes. By the summer of twenty twenty four, sea surface temperatures in The Atlantic and The Gulf had been setting heat records for over a year. So that means that there was plenty of fuel available for hurricanes to intensify. I'm gonna discuss hurricanes Beryl, Pauline, and Milton, all of which illustrate that your risk from hurricanes can extend far inland from the landfall location. Hurricane Beryl was the second named storm of the year. It organized and was named in June, and it reached category five intensity in the Atlantic Ocean in July. And in fact, it was the earliest hurricane to ever reach cap five strength in the Atlantic. This is likely due to the warm sea surface temperatures, which provided plenty of energy for it to intensify. Ferrell impacted islands in the Caribbean and the Yucatan Peninsula, reorganized in the Gulf, and then made landfall in Texas as a category one. Belaying its category one strength, it caused 68 tornadoes across The US and into Canada over a three day period. You can see the tornadoes in this outbreak, in the images on the right. These are the NOAA storm prediction center storm reports. The red dots are where tornado reports were made. And you can see the tornadoes moving up from the ArkLaTex area to Illinois and Kentucky to New York and even Ontario. Cotality estimates barrel caused two and a half to three and a half billion in damages. In terms of widespread devastation, I think hurricane Helene was the storm of the year. For starters, there was a stationary front that set up over the Appalachian Mountains the week before Helene made landfall. This stationary front dropped eight to 10 inches of rain, which saturated the soil. This is known as a predecessor rain event. Helene made landfall as a category four hurricane in the Big Bend region of Florida, bringing over a 16 feet of storm surge. It continued up through Georgia, upstate South Carolina, leaving a trail of wind and flooding damage. When the storm hit the Appalachians, the mountains forced the air upwards, forcing it to condense and effectively squeezing moisture out of the air. This is called orographic uplift. Due to the orographic uplift on the steep slopes of the Blue Ridge Mountains, 12 to over 30 inches of rain fell from Hawaii. This resulted in devastating widespread flash flooding along the many creeks and rivers in the region and hundreds of landslides on the steep slopes where the soil was too saturated to hold on any longer. Power, water, and roads were knocked out in many areas for months, and infrastructure in some areas is still being restored. The worst flooding occurred in the mountains of Western North Carolina, Northeastern Tennessee, and Southwestern Virginia. This was a one in one thousand year rain event. Some areas got almost their yearly average rainfall in just the several days around Killeen. The image on the right is from NOAA, and it shows the accumulated rainfall over the period where Helene made landfall. And you can see the worst areas basically trace the Blue Ridge Mountains. Image on the left shows the the swath of power outages left by Helene in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina. Unfortunately, Killeen led to an estimated two hundred and fifty one deaths. Most of those were attributed to inland flooding. This makes it the deadliest US hurricane since hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico and the deadliest hurricane to make landfall in The United States on the Mainland since hurricane Katrina. The National Weather Service office in Greenville, Spartanburg, South Carolina, which is responsible for forecasting for Western North Carolina in the Appalachians, said in one of their forecasts before Helene that this would be one of the most significant weather events in the modern era, and I think they were right. In addition to the tragic loss of life, unfortunately, the vast majority of these flooded properties in the Appalachians did not have flood insurance. They were not located in federally designated flood zones, so they weren't required to have flood insurance. Cotality estimates that there is a 20 to $30,000,000,000 gap in between insured and non insured losses, due to clean. Next, I'll discuss hurricane Milton. Milton came only about two weeks after hurricane Helene did on the West Coast Of Florida. So there were already damaged homes with tarps on them, and there were piles of debris that could have posed a missile hazard when Milton's winds arrived. Milton reached category five strength in The Gulf and actually tied hurricane Rita for the strongest hurricane or the lowest measured pressure as a category five. For a while, Milton was forecast to directly hit Tampa Bay. This is a worst case scenario for emergency managers, a category five hitting a major metropolitan area. However, Milton veered south and made landfall as a category three, bringing storm surge and winds to Sarasota, Fort Myers, and Naples, causing significant damage there. Milton also caused a tornado outbreak on the East Coast Of Florida, where some people had in fact evacuated to, thinking that they would be safe on the opposite coast. 46 confirmed tornadoes were linked to Milton on the East Coast Of Florida, leading to six deaths just from the tornadoes. You can see these tornadoes as the red dots on the storm prediction center. Storm reports graphic on the right. Fatality estimates Milton caused 17 to 28,000,000,000 in damage, not explicitly including the tornado damage. For the twenty twenty five hurricane season, my alma mater, Colorado State University, predicts an above average hurricane season due to warmer sea surface temperatures in the Gulf And Atlantic Oceans. On the right, this is a graphic from NOAA showing sea surface temperature anomalies. You can see in the Gulf and the Atlantic Seaboard, there are some oranges and reds. That indicates that the ocean temperatures there are several degrees warmer than average, which will provide plenty of fuel for any hurricanes. ENSO is currently neutral and forecast to remain neutral through August with high confidence. If it changes to either La Nina or El Nino, then that could impact hurricanes in The Atlantic. There are some modes of interseasonal variability, like the Mad Julian Oscillation or the Northern Atlantic Oscillation that can also affect hurricane formation. There are several ensembles that attempt to predict these phenomena, but they can only predict about a month out. So if an MJO event or the NAO changes phase, then that could impact hurricanes following that change in environmental conditions. Back to you, John. Excellent. Thank you so much, Caitlin. Really appreciate you, coming on to share your insights. So, next, we're gonna invite Howard Kunst up to the stage. Howard's our chief actuary. He's gonna tell you a little bit about the headwind and tailwinds that are, currently impacting the insurance industry, especially with regards due to hurricane risks. So, Howard, over to you. Thank you, John. So what I'm gonna start with here is is a a summary of of what's happened over the last ten years in The US and and just kinda level set, you know, the the industry. What we're looking at here is The US landfall hurricanes over the last ten years, not just Florida, but the the entire US. But what we did here was we we put them at as if they would happen today. So we ran them at at current, dollars. What's significant here is that this will then capture and put it all on a on a normalized basis of of what happened today and at today's dollars. One of the things we we, forget about as we look at the the huge increases in the dollars of of loss that we're seeing over recent years is that that's accompanied by a significant increase in reconstruction costs and as a result also claim costs over the past five years especially since COVID. So we've seen a huge increase in the dollars of loss and a lot of that comes from just the fact that everything costs more. What we see here, the the blue bars are the dollars of loss, at the current estimates by by the years, and the the line is the number of events in those years. And so you can see there has been significant, variability and and over the the last ten years. And and it did start with, you know, a time in the in the late teens where we know that there was a a time of of, you know, reduced activity in the in North Atlantic and and, there were there was a long streak there of not having any major hurricanes actually impact The US coastline. So so the first five years was a little bit down and then these last five years you see, three of the top four years of of of losses were in these last five years. But but this this does a good job of showing the variability, you know, across the years and, you know, what we're we're talking about relative to to how that impacts the the market and and what insurance companies that need to to get rates. I mean, over the over those first five years, when activity is down, there was, you know, softening of the market and then softening the reinsurance market. And then as soon as we started seeing some losses hit again, we saw rates rates and reinsurance rates, on the increase. One of the interesting things that happened in '24 was this combination of of hurricanes, so Helene and and Milton. And and I'll I'll kinda talk about that here in that. When when Helene went through first, you know, it it impacted, you know, the Northern Coast, the North again, the Big Bend area of Florida and then moved moved north, but it didn't do as much, you know, dollars of of, like, wind losses in in Florida and on. But, you know, as as Caitlin mentioned, a lot of the losses caused by by Helene were from flooding. But but there was wind that impacted, some areas. But but one of the interesting things, on the on the, like, the Southeast side of the storm along the Western Coast Of Of Of Florida, there wasn't a lot of wind, but we did see a lot of a lot of rain and and there was a, you know, a lot of saturation of rain and and some some potentially water losses in in properties along the West Coast Of Of Florida. And then so, once Milton came through, you know, shortly thereafter, a lot of that those areas were already saturated with with with rain and there was some loss already. And so when Milton came through with the wind, it you know, the the potential already damaged from from hurricane lean exacerbated the, the damage that was done in in by Milton. And and not only that, but then it it did cause a a, issue with with both insurers and reinsurers relative to the the timing and and how they would, assess each each loss relative to the storm. So two things there. I mean, so the timing issue, you know, so with with the two storms very close both spatially and time wise, it did cause those issues of of recording which which loss goes to which event, which is significant both for the insurance company and the and the reinsurers to understand, the the recoveries of reinsurance. But the one thing that I also added there was, from for some of the claims that would have been from from Milton, if there was damage already present from Helene, were were those damages covered? Was it was it a flood loss that wouldn't be covered by a by a standard property insurance coverage? So there were, you know, a a couple of issues here that that drove, you know, some some questions in the insurance industry, based on those two two events being so close together. And I think many people and and many many insureds in in Florida are still dealing with trying to understand, getting getting their if if they have actually coverage, there will be a loss that will be paid. But, you know, really, when we talk about hurricanes in the in the insurance industry, we really, you know, prop you know, Florida is is the the big issue. And, you know, Florida leads the way in in in hurricane losses and and it's been a been a big issue. And and when we talk about the whole, across the entire United States, the the issue of of, you know, catastrophes and and rates and and property rates, we've we've seen a lot of a lot of, turmoil in property insurance rates and and premiums over the the past few years. Florida is no exception. But we you know, you have two ends of the the spectrum when we're talking about a property insurance. And, you know, the one is is areas where insurance cannot get enough premium, enough rate. And so if if that's possible, they will cut back and reduce the amount of of of coverage that they write and there'll be some availability issues. Florida had it doesn't have availability issues, but they have an affordability issue and that insurers have been able to get the rate. But in some areas, those rates have doubled or more and then with the addition of of reconstruction costs going up, we've seen insurance premiums, you know, double, triple, and even quadruple in for some people, which is causing affordability issue. And the reason why that's really big issue in in Florida is this item called legal system abuse where we're seeing, you know, huge increase in in property claims and and lawsuits being filed in in Florida. And this is, the the Insurance Institute of America calls it legal system abuse. And so we have lawyers and this third party litigation funding where big firms are funding and then as an investment, tool, filing claims. And of course, you also have with with Florida, it's been going on for a while with contractors, the assignment of benefits and and the, increase in claims from that. Florida has put in some reforms recently to try to enact it and it has, has an that has stabilized the market. But I think, you know, many insured were hoping that the hoping for more because they would like to see rates start going down, because they're happy going up so so dramatically. So there's still some turmoil there and I think there's still some work to be done. Unfortunately, we have some lobbyists in Florida that are actually trying to get those reforms removed, which would which cause, you know, rates to go back up again and and loss go up. But I read just this week that really only 15% of voters in in Florida believe that, you know, the past reforms were enough and and really think there should be more to be done because they do wanna see those rates come down. And and with that, I will pass it back to Jon. Excellent. Thank you so much, Howard. Really appreciate you, coming on. And you and Caitlin to sort of set the stage, for for what we can expect, you know, coming this year, not just terms of, you know, how many hurricanes or major hurricanes or named storms we'll see, but, you know, what what are the sort of challenges that carriers are facing, in The US? So with that stage set, what we're gonna do is we're gonna bring up, Brian Sullivan. Brian is a senior product manager for our resiliency suite, of of tools here at Cotality. We're talking about resilience and, you know, what we can do really to, better measure risk, going forward just to, you know, reduce those losses and make sure, you know, strong business going forward. So, Brian, with that, I'm gonna hand it over to you. Great. Thanks so much, Jon, and to all the attendees for joining us today. So after a season like 2024, no one needs to be reminded that hurricane risk is real. Right? The bigger question now is how do we get ahead of it? And that's where resiliency comes in. It's not just a concept or a buzzword. It's a smarter way to understand and manage risk. Every property is different, and each one has a different capacity to withstand hurricane force winds. So how can we build a framework to quantify that? We can take physical characteristics, things like roof type, structure, year built, and combine them with things like building codes, replacement class, climatological data to score how vulnerable or resilient a structure is. And at the high end of the resiliency spectrum, we're looking at homes built to last. Right? Those properties with higher building quality, specific roof framing, shape ties, exterior material that's going to withstand these hurricane force winds, and at the low end, the opposite. And we need to understand again that every property is unique. And it's this granularity that gives underwriters more certainty, segmentation power, and a more accurate read before the storm ever forms. Because hurricanes are becoming more frequent, they're becoming more intense, and more expensive, and yet most risk tools haven't quite caught up. So legacy risk models relying heavily on ZIP code level, community based scoring, post event data. But underwriting happens before the storm, and that's where the opportunity lies. By understanding resiliency, we can reimagine how risk is assessed. Think a structure level model designed to evaluate how a building will actually perform during a hurricane using those building codes, those structural characteristics, and proven predictors of performance. And the result, a score that reflects the true wind resiliency of a property, helping you separate the vulnerable from the structurally sound. So with a product like wind resiliency, it's not just another risk model. It's a preemptive understanding built with the underwriter in mind. It gives you predictive property level score based on how a structure is likely to respond to catastrophic wind and not just where it sits geographically. So with this type of information, we can segment more effectively, justify decision making with greater accuracy, and flag mitigation opportunities before bind. Granularity at the community level isn't enough anymore. Understanding how structure and property characteristics interact with hurricane hazards is what sets wind resiliency apart. And so to wrap things up, 2024 season reshaped expectations. It may have exposed some limitations of traditional approaches and highlighted the need for deeper, more precise tools. In our totality, our goal isn't just to score wind risk. It's to help you anchor resilience into every decision you make. Because moving forward, success will belong to those who turn uncertainty into confidence, one structure at a time. Thanks so much. Back over to you, Jon. Excellent. Thank you so much, Brian. So while we're still in this sort of vein of what we can do, you know, before the storms, before before the storms get here, how we can manage our risk, I wanna keeping that sort of, school found mine. I wanna invite Paschal Pascoe up to the stage to talk about managing our risk from sort of a cat load standpoint. So, Paschal, I'm gonna hand things over to you. Thank you, Jon. So how do we determine hurricane risk? We have to understand what drives it. There are four core components, location, hazard, building, and insurance conditions. Location is foundational. It's not just about the proximity to the coast. It's also about ground elevation, terrain roughness, and local geography. For example, a property just a few miles inland may have vastly different risk characteristics than one near the shoreline, especially if it's at a lower elevation or surrounded by flat terrain. In recent years, we've seen significant population growth in coastal and high risk areas, particularly in states like Texas, the Carolinas, and Florida, regions that are highly exposed to hurricane wind and flood. Then we consider the hazard. What level of wind speed or flood depth could a property face in a hurricane? That includes everything from category one winds to catastrophic impacts from a category five storm. We also consider storm surge and inland flooding that causes that sometimes cause most of the significant damage. The building itself is also critical. What's the building made of? When was the building built? Is it a single family home? Is it a high rise? We also factor in local building codes and how strictly these codes are enforced and how these codes evolve over time. All of these factors influence how structure performs during a storm. Finally, we layer in insurance conditions. What deductibles and coverage limits apply? Is there a percentage hurricane deductible or a flat deductible? Does the policy include contents coverage? And if so, to what extent? These factors don't change the physical hazard, but they significantly affect the financial outcomes. Together, these components form the foundation of how we assess hurricane risk. Now understanding the risk is only the beginning. You also need to quantify it. That's where a robust catastrophe model becomes essential. A key question we hear from clients is, how much could I lose if a hurricane hits? Whether you're pricing policies, purchasing reinsurance, or managing capital, you need to be confident in that answer. Our Cotality North Atlantic hurricane model is built for exactly that. It brings together high resolution hazard, vulnerability, and financial modeling to simulate thousands of hurricane scenarios and tell you what losses could look like under different return periods for different storm conditions. The model is especially helpful in aligning price with expected outcomes. If you're hearing too much reinsurance or excess capital, you might price yourself out of the market. But if you're underestimating risk, a direct hit could lead to distress. And what our model does, it helps strike that balance. Beyond individual portfolios, our clients also use the model to gain a complete view of potential hurricane impacts across the entire insurance market. This broader perspective enables more inform and a more competitive decision making practice, helping you stay ahead in a dynamic risk landscape. But most importantly, the model is built to support real risk management decisions, not just an actuarial analysis. Whether you're an underwriter, a reinsurer, or a capital provider, we're focused on delivering the insights that matter to your business. To bring that to life, let's look at a real world example from our model using hurricane Irma from 02/2017. To estimate what hurricane Irma's impact would look like in 2025, we used our latest event catalog combined with the market portfolio updated with current exposure data, reflecting inflation and higher replacement cost values. If hurricane Irma were to occur in 2025, total losses from just hurricane winds and storm surge would exceed $40,000,000,000 with insured losses surpassing 21,000,000,000. What's really interesting is how we got there. Irma made landfall on the West Coast Of Florida near Naples, but two of the counties with the highest claim counts were on the East Coast in Miami Dade and Broward. And that speaks to a major strength of our model, its ability to capture broad and widespread wind fields, not just damage near the storm center. These moderate and low severity claims, they can spread across a wide area and often make up a large share of total losses, and our model reflects that. This kind of real world performance gives our clients confidence that the model isn't just theoretically sound. It behaves in a way that matches how losses actually happen in real events. I'd like to wrap up my session talking about how we partner with our clients to not only provide the model, but also the tools and insights and support to get the most value from the model. There are three key ways we help. That's through our new platform Navigate, our consulting team, and our event response capabilities. First, let me introduce you to Navigate, our cloud based analytics platform that delivers access to our high fidelity models with unmatched speed, scalability, and usability. You can get faster insights with quicker processing and results. You can scale seamlessly across portfolios and teams, and you can integrate the model into workflows efficiently and cost effectively. Behind the scenes, our models run on a three hundred thousand year high resolution simulation framework, offering the granularity and robustness needed to match how catastrophe losses really unfold. These platforms support automated and code free workflows, flexible data input formats, and ensures that results are consistent across all delivery methods. Navigate really represents a new era in catastrophe modeling. Bring together accuracy, performance, and ease of use all in one place. Now, of course, great tools are only part of the story. Our consulting team brings deep expert expertise across the insurance, reinsurance, and capital market space. These are seasoned catastrophe modelers who worked with everything from cap bond structuring to primary and reinsurance portfolio analysis. Their role is to help clients interpret results, optimize risk strategies, and make informed decision using Cotality models. Whether you need help portfolio stress testing, scenario customization, or just a second opinion, we're here to help turn data into strategy. And finally, during live events, our HazardHQ team, our event response team, led by John Schneyer, helps clients respond quickly and confidently. In addition to published reports, we provide timely proxy event modeling, loss projections, and risk specific guidance as the situation unfolds. That way, clients can assess exposure, communicate clearly with stakeholders, and make real time decisions based on trusted, modeled insights. We know that during an active storm, time matters, and our team is built to deliver with both speed and accuracy. Very grateful for your time. Thank you. Back to you, John. Thanks, Tal. And I appreciate the, shout out to HazardHQ, our event response. Services. Like you said, it's, yeah, it's a big part of what we do and, obviously, very, very important to me. So we've been focusing very heavily so far on what we can do to manage our risk before any sort of storms, make landfall. But, the real, you know, the real hard work, the real the real labor, the difficulties come after the storm, makes landfall, causes damage, and there's a a flood of claims that come in, post event. And and being able to manage those claims is a great way to effectively manage each of our expenses, that that can arise dealing with with storms. So we're gonna invite Mike Kolar, our senior client director, up to talk about how to handle, right, this, surge in claims that, you might be, might might come your way, if, if you're not hurricane, was to make landfall in a densely populated area. So, Mike, over to you. Thank you, Jon, and and good afternoon, everyone, from the state of Florida where I, currently sit. As we continue preparing for the next major hurricane event, I'd like to highlight some of the key challenges insurers commonly face in the aftermath of a storm. And this section here is about the readiness, resilience, and ensuring policyholders receive the support they need when it matters most. So the claim search, why trusted partnership matters. We all know what happens when a big storm hits. Claims come in fast and the pressure is on. That's when strong partnerships really matter. One of the biggest pain points during a surge is first notice of loss. If the data coming in is messy or incomplete, it slows everything down. This leads to rework, delays, and a lot of frustration, for both teams and customers. That's where a single source of truth comes in, such as Cotality's smart data platform. It pulls together and eriches data from across the property life cycle. At the core is what we call our CLIP ID. What you could think of that of it as is is bin for property. This mechanism helps keep property data consistent across systems, so no more reconciling mismatched information. So what's the result? Clean, connected data from the start. That means faster, more accurate claim handling even when the volumes are spiking. And let's not forget about the people side because that's obviously the most important. When teams are stretched thin, service can suffer. So trusted tools and partnerships help ease that burden so your teams can move faster and stay focused on the customer. Inspection and dispatch challenges. A common issue we see in the claims process is the need for reinspections, often caused by incomplete or inaccurate first time inspections. This slows down resolution and creates frustration for policyholders. To help address this, we use solutions such as our dispatch dispatch service, which assigns the right resource to each task based on availability, skill, and location. This helps ensure the right person is on the job from the very start. Then with our inspect tool, inspectors follow guided workflows that help capture the necessary documentation and complete a thorough, policy aligned inspection. The platform also supports collaboration between field and office teams, which ultimately helps reduce this errors and improves that consistency that we're looking for. These tools combined really provide just a small sample of how a more efficient and accurate inspection process can occur that ultimately minimizes delays and improves the overall claims experience. So combating claim fraud with data. As we know, after any major event, surge in claims is expected, but unfortunately, so is the rise in fraudulent activity. It's growing concern that constrain resources, inflate costs, and erode trust. That's why data is our first line of defense, and specifically, forensic weather data plays a critical role role in validating claims. If a policyholder reports hail damage, as an example, we do know with certainty whether hail actually occurred at that location. Did it occur on that date? And then we also know with a lot of certainty the the size of that hail too. Was it two inch? Was it three inch? Was it less than one inch? So our forensic weather data can help with that. And this is where these trusted weather solutions come in to provide that detailed forecast forecasting, data modeling, and forensic reporting, giving us clear insight into both potential and verified weather events. It helps adjusters visualize the impact of storms, optimize catastrophe response, and most importantly, verify the severity and timing of these natural disasters. Integrating this intelligence directly into the claims process is also critical so adjusters have real time, location specific weather data at their fingertips. That means faster decisions, fewer false claims, and a stronger foundation for every payout. In short, we're not just reacting to the fraud, we're proactively preventing it with the power of trusted data. So adjuster shortage in scope inconsistencies. One of the ongoing challenges we continue to face across the industry is the adjuster shortage. There's a variety of reasons why these these shortages occur. It can be due to retirements, burnout, or just sheer volume of catastrophic events. The talent gap is real. We all know that. And it's impacting how quickly and accurately we can respond to claims. With fewer experienced adjusters in the field, we're seeing more inconsistent scopes and estimates. That's not surprising. Right? Less experience often means more variability in how damage is assessed and documented, and that variability can lead to delays, rework, and even disputes. That's exactly why we built tools designed to guide adjusters through standardized workflows. These workflows help reduce variability, improve accuracy, and ensure that even less experienced adjusters can reduce consistent, high quality estimates. It's about giving your teams the support they need so they can focus less on the guesswork and more getting the job done the right and the first time. So policyholder expect expectations and transparency. So today's policyholders expect more than just a resolution. They expect real time updates and transparency throughout the entire claims process. That that's nothing new. We've been dealing with that forever. Right? They wanna know where does my claim stand? What's next? When will I be paid? And they want that information without having to make multiple phone calls or chase down answers. That's where solutions like Engage comes in. This solution provides seamless communication and collaboration between carriers, policyholders, and vendor partners. It simplifies data collection, supports virtual claim adjustment, and provides clear visibility into each step of the claim. This not only helps speed up the resolution, it also builds trust and improves the overall customer experience. By giving policyholders the transparency they expect, this helps drive satisfaction and ultimately increases retention. And finally, flood forms, to provide you an example of a quick win for efficiency. So for those of you that are handling flood claims, you know how time consuming and error prone the flood process can be, the flood form process can be, especially during surge events when speed and accuracy are are critical. That's why we built a question based interface into our estimating platform that autofills NFIP model flood forms. It's simple, but very powerful way to save time and reduce friction. The system automatically pulls in key data, like loss summaries, coverage details, and estimate information, and uses that to populate the required forms. No more manual entry, no more toggling between the many, many different systems, and far fewer chances for errors. It's a quick win that delivers real impact, streamlining your workflow, reducing rework, and helping your team stay focused on what matters most, and that's resolving claims and supporting policyholders. Thank you for your time today. Jon, back to you. Excellent. Thank you so much, Mike. So we got, I guess you can call it breaking news. I'm actually gonna invite Caitlin Fine back up on stage to the, the, the NOAA season outlook, came out today. So, Kayla, why don't you come back on and join me, and you can walk us and all all the attendees through, just what what NOAA is expecting from the twenty twenty five hurricane season. Sure thing. Thanks, John. They NOAA did their press conference this morning, so that was not available when I made these slides, but I will tell you what NOAA said now. They released their twenty twenty five North Atlantic hurricane season forecast. They forecast an above average year, 60% chance of that, with 13 to 19 storms expected. So that's tropical storm strength or greater. Six to 10 hurricanes expected, and three to five major hurricanes, which is how they refer to a category three or greater hurricane. They expect this above average activity due to the warm sea surface temperatures that we discussed and the currently ENSO neutral conditions. Interestingly, I read that while sea surface temperatures are in fact warmer than a long term average this year, they are not as warm as they were at this point last year. Thanks, John. Great. Thanks, Kayla. Alright, everyone. I hope you found today's webinar, both interesting and informative. You know, and the new hurricane season means it's it's time to take stock of what is at risk in order to to make the most informed decisions in regards to increasing resilience in the face of hurricanes. One of the most pointed challenges to a goal of resilient society is the sudden shock from natural catastrophes. Building resilience involves strengthening homes and the challenge of incentivizing homeowners to invest in fortifying their property, reducing the potential for loss. Achieving the goal of resilience requires an accurate assessment of the risks, and the benefits attained requires reliable data and expert understanding of the real estate and insurance ecosystems. At Cotality, it is always our goal to be that partner to to help those who have to make those decisions do so, with the data and analytics and insights needed to to make those informed decisions to work with you along the way. So this concludes our webcast. I wanna thank you all so much for joining us today. Thank you, and have a great day and rest of your week.